


Logician Is A Bad Word

by AgapantoBlu



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blood and Gore, But it's minor and not graphic, Character Study, Declan has a gun for a reason guys, Give Declan Some Love, Niall Is Not A Good Father, Original Character Death(s), Violence, also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 00:58:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12972225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: Niall was a raging arson that took no prisoners and spread, unstoppable, but Declan was a creature of cold ruthlessness, a snake with razor sharp fangs in the folds of his irises, and he cut like a firebreak road.What a joke, that the first son of a dreamer and his dream was nothing but a cynical logician.If you go back in time just enough, this could be the story of Declan Lynch, not a dreamer and not a dream.





	Logician Is A Bad Word

Depending on where you began the story, it was about Declan Lynch. But you have to go back in time, quite some actually.

The story could be about a suit-claded twenty-something Declan Lynch threading webs of lies around his brothers, a protective spider holding a champagne glass. Or it could be about a blood-soaked thirteen-years-old Declan Lynch cradling a broken arm to his chest under his father’s dispassionate look.

Niall Lynch was not the kind of man to beat his kids. His cruelty was a completely different beast that showed its ugly mug in the shape of a child with a gun and a silencer, bigger hands on his shoulders and widened eyes, surrounded by a deep voice speaking of quietness and  _your brothers are sleeping just inside, you don’t want them to wake them up, son, do you?, you don’t want them to see this, you don’t want them to get involved in this_ , and a mystical creature whimpering behind him. The creature had a broken wing and big eyes almost human and Niall had told Declan to keep the gun trained on it as he fetched a net.

Niall Lynch’s cruelty was breaking his son’s arm as he pulled him out of the beast’s attack, its last attempt at freedom, and later holding his son’s sane hand with his as they pulled the trigger together. They was close enough for the spurts of blood to stain Declan’s face and chest and hands.

Declan thinks back to that night constantly for his whole life. About the sad, disappointed look in his father’s eyes as he looked down to his hurdled puking form and sighed, “ _I told you to be careful._ ”

 

 

Depending on where you began the story, it was about a child who learnt to shoot in his backyard at midnight and to cut deals through the smoky mist of a pub that pretends to be Irish in the suburb of D.C. 

Declan would never see it that way though. Declan thinks he stopped being a child the first time his father made him kill  _something_.

 

 

Depending on where you began the story, it was about Declan losing his brothers.

He didn’t care about his parents, not really. He’d always been the odd one in a family that liked dichotomies but only had two parents for three children; an old game of Memory with one tassel too many, matchless. But he cared for his brothers. He loved them fiercely.

He loved Ronan when he snuck into his room at night, begging for a place in his bed to escape the nightmares; and he mourned the day he started carrying a gun under his mattress and had to claim there was no room for his brother anymore.  _We’re too old for that_ , instead of  _I don’t want you to get hurt._

He loved Matthew when he brought him crayons and asked to draw together; and he cried at night knowing that he was bound to lose both his brothers at once, the dreamer and his dream, if fatality ever occurred to the special Ronan.

Niall was a selfish dreamer, and Aurora a vapid dream, that Declan wanted to hate, just to know they were important enough for him to waste energy and feelings on. But that was not the case.

Niall was a raging arson that took no prisoners and spread, unstoppable, but Declan was a creature of cold ruthlessness, a snake with razor sharp fangs in the folds of his irises, and he cut like a firebreak road.

What a joke, that the first son of a dreamer and his dream was nothing but a cynical logician.

 

 

Apathy had been Declan’s best friend from the day he found his brother agonizing over their father’s corpse. Just after the litany of,  _please, please, please, God, let it not be Ronan’s blood, let him be alright, God, I beg you._

Apathy was Declan Lynch’s best friend until the day he ran to his living room to Matthew’s screams and knew,  _knew_ , it was Ronan this time, it was,  _it is, God, no, no, no, please, not Ronan, not Ronan, not Ronan-._

Matt cried and screamed and begged as his body was unmade, piece by gruesome piece, covering in blood Declan’s face and chest and hands. And he was not thirteen anymore, but he was just as useless.

He didn’t know how he cradled Matthew’s head to his chest with a hand and dialed Ronan’s phone with the other, but Matt was silent now and all that filled the room was Declan’s voice, sorrow masked for anger. “Goddammit, Ronan, answer your fucking phone for once in your bloody life! Come on, Ronan!”

_Please, God, please._

The rhythmic ringing on the phone only underlined how much slower Matthew’s breathing was, time after time.

_Everything but my brothers._

 

 

Depending on where you began the story, it was about the millisecond after the second coming of the Big Bang, the instant the blast of light receded and showed no more gore on the carpet, and one brother breathing hard in his lap and another who-knows-where but alive,  _alive, alive._

 _“See, Declan?_ _”_ Niall had told him the first time he pulled a trigger on his own, blood oozing from a monster’s forehead in Ronan’s bedroom, red drops staining his brother’s favorite plush and all over the carpet. “ _All gone, just like waking up from a nightmare._ ”

Declan soothed Matthew with his lips, and cursed his father with his heart.

 

 

Declan Lynch  _guessed_  that, depending on where you began the story, it could also be about how diligent, hard-working, serious Adam Parrish somehow decided the was okay dating rude, loud-mouthed, local-dreamer Ronan Lynch. But that was not a story Declan wanted to know the details of. 

As long as Parrish didn’t fuck his brother up, Declan was fine with it. Always better than Kavinsky, after all.

Though, the only thing Declan had been reasonably sure of, after guessing his brother’s sexuality, was that,  _at least_ , Ronan wouldn’t show up to his door, one day, with an unplanned child.

He should have known better, really. Did he seriously learn nothing since Matthew?

Declan guessed there had to be a point of the story that, starting from, would make it about Opal too, but he was really _too tired_  for that. 

He turned his back on his acquired niece, who was happily chewing out  _his_  newest boots, and went back inside the Barns’ living room hoping Ronan hadn’t finished all the booze on his own already.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at @agapantoblu


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